


With Friends Like These

by SilviaKundera



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Alternate Canon, M/M, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-30
Updated: 2012-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-21 23:33:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilviaKundera/pseuds/SilviaKundera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Mark and Dustin have bad plans, Eduardo is terribly mistreated, and the way to Sean Parker's heart is (obviously) to convince him that you liked him first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It wasn’t that Eduardo didn’t feel bad about the chicken.

He’d generally considered himself to be a consummate friend of the animals. He'd given money to Greenpeace once in high school. The death of his first hamster had been entirely accidental. And he really didn’t enjoy that look that he’d put on Mark’s face, like he was very terribly amused, except for the parts of him that weren’t, at all.

"I’m sorry about the article, I _am_ , but there are _lines_."

"It’s _Sean Parker_ , Wardo."

"Who I don’t want 10 miles near our company," Eduardo protested.

"Then how about just his contacts," Dustin said and shrugged when Eduardo snapped,

"You’re not helping."

Dustin’s smug expression expressed that he knew very well that he wasn’t helping, and the excellent reason for that is that he was on Mark’s fucking side.

Someday Dustin would meet a girl he was crazy about, and she’d actually agree to date him, and then Eduardo was going to make her love him, and think he was an absolute angel, and Dustin would be in so much trouble.

"I’m not even _gay_."

Mark’s eyes narrowed. "You’re a little gay."

"I made out with Sergio Rodriguez _one time_ , after 3 kamikazes."

"I didn’t know Sergio was gay," Dustin said, amused.

Eduardo said, pointedly, "I don’t think he is," and was immensely self-satisfied for the 30 blissful seconds before he noticed Dustin smiling craftily.

"Hey, doesn’t he row crew?"

"Well, that settles it." Mark folded his hands together, smirking. "I don’t think you could sink any lower."

"I think we need to further explore your crew issues," said Eduardo.

"You are welcome to do so, after you ask out Sean Parker."

"I think there’s been some terrible misunderstanding."

Mark’s expression as he leaned back in his chair was completely resolute. "This is your duty as CFO."

"And for loooooove," Dustin said.

*

There was probably a perfectly logical explanation for all this, but Eduardo never actually discovered it – mostly because he was too busy being horrified beyond belief.

The gist of it initially appeared to be:

Sean had communicated a certain romantic, or vaguely sexual, or obscenely pornographic, interest in Eduardo. (Mark wasn’t quite sure, but then it was _Mark_.)

Sean knew investors.

Mark wanted investors.

Eduardo was a really, really good friend.

*

It seemed safe to assume that asking out a guy was the same process as asking out a girl, and it appeared to be going well for something Eduardo did not - in any way, shape, or form - want to be doing, until he tried to pull out Sean’s chair for him at the restaurant and Sean was consumed with cackling laughter. It was so bad he started hacking, gripping the table, and then he had to use an inhaler. (This was unsettling on its own, because the implied vulnerability made him seem just a bit little human, and Eduardo had been pretty sure that Sean was secretly an evil robot programmed to spew out start-up jargon, confabulate reality with parables, and disrupt every aspect of Eduardo’s carefully ordered life.)

"Is this a date," Sean gasped, and Eduardo bit his lip, fingers curling up to tug anxiously at his jacket sleeves.

"uh, if you want it to be?"

This set Sean off cackling again, though he managed to stifle it enough to place his order with the waitress.

"Wow, Mark’s a funny guy," Sean said, blatantly admiring the swing of her hips she left to retrieve their wine. "He couldn’t tell I was joking?"

Eduardo struggled to think of a time when he was more mortified.

He came to the decision that, like the chicken, this was slightly superior to an established reputation for necrophilia. But it was still pretty damn bad.

This would be why he tried to immediately flee, with ardent dreams of licking his wounds in private, except Sean grabbed his wrist and shot him the first honest smile Eduardo had ever seen him bestow.

Frankly, he hadn’t been certain Sean could _do_ that. (see: evil robot)

"No, no, don’t go," Sean encouraged. "Let’s stay and talk business. You know, without the boss man."

And he wouldn’t have, he considered up and leaving at least fifteen more times, but Sean was being so horrifically _nice_ about it. And he had to think up all the various insidious lies he was going to tell Dustin’s future girlfriend, which would take a while.

"I realize you’ve just been the victim of accidental sexual harassment, but you’ll still give me an alibi when I have to beat my best friend to death with this—" Eduardo hefted it with his left hand and blinked. "—surprisingly heavy desert menu, won’t you?"

"This is going to be fucking hysterical in 10 years, trust me," Sean said, reaching out to smack him consolingly on the shoulder.

"You’re probably right", Eduardo admitted, took a gulp of wine, and let Sean tell him a story about the time an aide from the Commerce Secretary called his parents to explain how he was dismantling the fabric of capitalist society.

It was actually pretty funny and an apt analogy to Eduardo's tendency to overemphasize revenue over growth-- though he'd be taking that observation to his death bed.

"So, I didn’t know you were gay," Sean said, once Eduardo had stopped shooting longing glances towards the exit.

"I’m not. Really."

Sean grinned at him over his glass. "Now I’m flattered."

"It was mostly under duress."

*

"I'm not speaking to you," Eduardo said, very seriously, when he got back.

"Oh my god," Dustin shrieked. "He stole your delicate maidenhood, _didn't he_?"

"NO, he did not--" Eduardo paused. "Is my delicate maidenhood supposed to be my _ass_?"

"Oh good", Dustin said, relieved. "Just a blowjob then."

*

Then Mark decided the entire operation had to move to Palo Alto.

"Since pimping me out didn’t work."

"I said I was sorry about that," Mark said crossly.

Slightly Cowed and Sincerely Apologetic Mark had lasted an unprecedented three days, but had not been seen or heard from since.

"I lost my _girlfriend_."

"Since none of the rest of us are getting laid," Mark drawled, "forgive me if my heart bleeds little for you."

"She kneed me in the nuts outside the observatory!"

"You did deserve that," Chris said mildly, who had not been amused at the discovery of their thwarted plans.

It was possible that he resented them for making a mockery of his sexuality. It was also possible he resented missing out on some prime Eduardo hazing. But most likely he was just of the opinion that an involuntary gay love affair that went nowhere was still cheating on your girlfriend, and a total dick move.

"We need another Linux box," said Mark, ignoring him, and passed over the specs.

Eduardo paged through the sheets and rolled them into a tube, tapping them against his leg a little nervously. "You know I can’t come with you guys."

Dustin booed loudly. "Aww, say it ain’t so! When we become gajillionaires Christy will totally take you back."

"We can get you better than Christy," Mark said, with a quirk of his lips, but Eduardo had serious concerns he might be _sterile_ , so hard did that knee connect. He swore he saw his life flashing in front of his eyes.

And man, it used to include a lot less sitting around and waiting on floors and at doorways.

"I’ve had more than enough of your matchmaking prowess, thank you very much."

*

When Mark had a new hobby that he could pair with his profound love of schadenfreude he tended to be a little relentless, but luckily there were opportunities for worldwide domination to distract him. Eduardo let Mark walk him through the navigation redesign, clicking happily with the thought of crushing his detractors.

It was both nice and a little bit of a bummer to see a happy Mark. Nice, because this was the most palpable form of Mark, the Mark who reminded him why he kept coming back around and ignoring the prickly exterior, and, fine, latching onto him not unlike like a baby duckling (there were really so _many_ reasons Dustin would pay). A bummer, because now Eduardo was reminded that he’d actually miss him.

Chris stopped him at the door on the way out, "Are you sure that’s a good move here?"

To be honest, Eduardo wasn’t sure either, but," _Sean Parker_ wants us in Palo Alto."

Chris opened his mouth to reply, and then paused. "Why do we keep calling him by his full name? It’s not like we know any other Seans."

Eduardo thought about it, scratching his neck. "More ominous."

"It does seem to instill a measure of dread."

"And now you’re humoring me."

"After Mark, you should be used to it."

"Look, if Sean Parker’s there, and he _might be_ , that’s enough of a reason at this point for me to be on the other side of the country."

"Good point," Chris conceded, and then continued, just when Eduardo was nodding, "Don’t want to tempt you to throw away your virtue."

"Dustin was concerned," he added when Eduardo flipped him off, then, "ow!" when Eduardo flicked him in the ear.

"fuck, fuck, ow, stop it, _will no one defend my honor_?"

"Sorry, too busy with Wardo's," Dustin shouted over his shoulder, intent on the television.

"ow, shit, you know that wasn't even me that time!"

*

It might have been irony when it turned out that Facebook was the perfect vehicle with which to spread an ex-boyfriend's infamy to all of your friends, but there was a reason Eduardo wasn't an English major. It certainly wasn't a surprise, though, to see Alice and an unfamiliar girl in a pencil skirt huffing past him on the way to the campus bookstore or a couple of sorority sisters whispering and sending him a dirty look.

"I really wish you'd stop doing things to make all the girls hate us," Eduardo sighed, leaning in the doorway as Mark checked his suitcases.

"It will be an interesting experiment to see if I can pull it off without them ever meeting you," Mark said.

"And sometimes I _really_ wish I could tell when you’re serious."

"Yeah, no you don’t," Chris said over Dustin’s eruption into giggles.


	2. Chapter 2

Eduardo received the text on a Wednesday, in the middle of orientation. So he got to hurriedly switch over to silent mode while the other two interns glared at him, which was fun.

_ur not coming out here?_

_who is this_

_who do u think_

There was only one person who thought he was that fucking cute.

_how did u get this #_

_thats what i wanted ttalk to u bout_

"Why is Sean texting me?" Eduardo asked Mark as soon as he picked up the phone.

"I’m actually in the middle of something."

" _Mark_."

"I don’t know. Probably because he’s staying here. Don’t call me for the next five hours unless it’s urgent. Not that there should be anything urgent. So just, don’t call me."

Typical.

The two interns glared harder when the door left out a shrill screech as he returned from the bathroom.

They were probably pretty delighted when he understood the full scope of the time commitment required and realized he’d have to quit.

At least someone was.

*

They’d ended up meeting with Sean one more time before he disappeared to parts unknown, because Mark had said, "It won’t be weird," when Eduardo said it would be too fucking weird, and explained, again, that they didn’t _need_ him, but if Mark wasn’t going to listen then at least let Eduardo sit this one out.

And then Eduardo had ended up on the other side of a table from Sean Parker again, thinking he really should start looking into his communication skills.

Mark had ordered them drinks in this proud way that Chris would have given him shit about if he’d been there and got to hear an astoundingly obvious lecture about how to translate networking into the online social media context, because relationship status, friends and fucking -- that’s only half of the picture.

There was another start-up from an ex-Yahoo devotee that Sean seemed to think they needed six contingency plans for, which made Eduardo a little _insane_.

Except whenever Sean was a particularly smug asshole or cut over him to shove his point into Mark’s face, he remembered Sean’s smile and how he could have ripped into Eduardo so hard he would have had to quit Facebook and never show his face outside of Harvard again, but Sean didn’t.

Except when Mark did that thing he probably never meant to, where he’d act like Eduardo didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, then _Sean_ would stop acting like Eduardo didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, if only for 1 or 2 minutes. And then when Eduardo gave him a look like, 'I know what you're up to, don't even pretend to care about my answer to that question’, Sean's face said, 'I don't know what you're talking about,' in this way that meant that he _totally did_.

So apparently all you had to do to win Sean Parker over was cause him to think you're completely infatuated with him.

It didn't get any weirder than that.

*

"I don't need his fucking charity," Eduardo had fumed when Dustin's head popped up at their return to Kirkland.

And when Dustin hooted, "Sounds like trouble in paradise!" he'd sworn right then and there that he'd have nothing else to do with Sean Parker for the rest of his life.

This was complicated by the two emails sitting in his inbox.

The first was a forward of an small article on that fucking start-up that Eduardo still stubbornly did not give a shit about, so that was easy to delete. The second said,

_to: esaverin@harvard.edu  
from: sparker@gmail.com  
subj: hi_

_ran into mark yesterday, thought I’d take him out on the town. get our boy genius out of the house._

_he offered me a place to crash. and maybe a friend sometimes._

_but I thought I’d check in with you on that first._

There was absolutely no power on this earth that could have made Eduardo agree to shoot himself in the proverbial foot like this -- other than that fact that if he said no Sean was absolutely _guaranteed_ to believe Eduardo was beside himself with agony at the thought of Sean humping some college girl or underwear model in the bed he was paying for, jerking off in the shower to hide his tears.

A man must have his dignity.

 _’It’s fine’_ , he typed in response, and then added, _’I might fly out for a weekend.’_ Because there was dignity, right, but there was also leaving a fox to guard the hen house.

*  
There wasn’t enough free time for two weeks, putting together growth projections for the firms he’d be visiting, scheduling appointments, and ignoring texts from Dustin like, _scandalized at your bf rite now :D:_

He trusted that Chris, at least, wouldn’t lie about the place burning down.

When Eduardo knocked on the door, some guy with unwashed spiky hair opened it and then slammed it in his face.

"I didn’t even introduce myself," Eduardo told the door, but then he considered how many be-suited Brazilians with suitcases could possibly be scheduled to drop by that afternoon and concluded that his reputation had likely preceded him.

He could also conjecture that (a) Sean was presently engaging in obscene acts of public affection on a couch or kitchen chair somewhere and (b) their diligent interns had been warned to respect the CFO’s delicate feelings.

Because that was exactly the kind of comedy of errors that his life had become.

It was a nice door, actually, Eduardo thought as he learned forward and pressed his forehead against it. Fairly clean. He comforted himself with the thought that at least Mark had indeed not fucked up with the neighborhood, and their equipment would be pretty safe here (in the event that everyone ever vacated the property all at once, which was sounding significantly more doubtful the more Eduardo pondered the quality of that dude’s hair).

Some good, thick oak, Eduardo emphasized to himself as he laid his cheek over it to shout plaintively through the wood that he didn’t care who was naked in there, he had a long flight with two layovers and he was fucking tired, so could someone just open up already, or everyone was fired, immediately.

(It wasn’t even mostly a lie. He could absolutely ask Mark to just replace them all and Mark would do it, because Mark was sort of a horrible asshole like that who considered people disposable, and also because Mark was his best friend in the world and visa versa, even if he tried to ruin Eduardo’s life with homeless internet rockstars, _so there_.)

"Hey!" Sean exclaimed with fake surprise as he swung open the door and nimbly caught Eduardo’s shoulders as he yelped and tumbled forward.

"We’re not talking," Eduardo said darkly, shoving himself backward, and ignored how Sean’s face folded into a sheepish 'sorry for all the blatant het-sex, bro' grin.

It was a little weird to be touching his chest and everything, when it was all warm and flushed from—doing things. But that was just because Sean had been _doing things_. About 15 seconds ago. And now Eduardo was touching him, right where someone else had been touching him and getting him all worked up. That would be understandably disconcerting to anyone.

"Wardo!" Mark said, hustling down into the living room and looking pleased, and that felt good and much less confusing.

It was a particularly welcome sight after all the thoughts about how Mark could make everyone pay, even if he’d never actually ask Mark to do that. (Sometimes he thought their friendship had initially been built on the rather twisted premise that Eduardo enjoyed the security of Mark’s potential directed wrath and Mark liked knowing that if he ever decided he’d like some empathy, human companionship, and a hug or something, Eduardo would totally be happy to do that and never ask questions or bring it up again. It wasn’t that either of them intended to ever access that resource; it was enough to know, secretly, that they could.)

"I'm staying for four days and I'm taking over your room," Eduardo said, somewhat mollified.

"That’s fine." Mark was looking distracted again. His fingers were twitching a little, as if going through keyboard withdrawal. "I haven’t used the bed for at least a week anyway."


	3. Chapter 3

Not a lot of conventional sleeping activity was happening in that particular Palo Alto residence, it turned out.

But they’d made leaps and bounds with the scripting and the forms were cleaner. Everything looked _amazing_ , honestly, so it was hard to remind people about basic nutrition, the dangers of sleep deprivation, and the possible perils of ingesting 20 gallons of Red Bull per week (such as a diabetic coma).

Eduardo wasn’t a doctor or anything, but that sounded probable.

"Let me just switch you over to sugar free."

"Fuck _off_ ," Mark said for the third time, and then, "Sean!"

"You’ll regret this when we’re dying alone together in a nursing home," said Eduardo, "and I’m in much better shape than you."

"We’re not dying alone," Mark said in his flatly consoling way, "we’re going to be billionaires."

"Never underestimate your ability to alienate everyone we meet."

"Except me," Sean said, arriving to sprawl across the doorway in such a way that it would be impossible to get past without physically shoving against him.

"Yeah, could you work on that?" Eduardo leaned over to drawl quietly in Mark’s ear, whose lips curved into an answering smirk, and then bent back up to say, loudly,

"A fact I give thanks for every single day."

*

There was a distinct possibility that Sean had been assigned to distract Eduardo from being a helpful and supportive friend, because he kept lurking around and springing out at Eduardo when he was making fresh squeezed orange juice or inspecting painful looking key marks on someone’s face from when they’d collapsed mid-coding.

But Eduardo did sort of really need all the profile functionalities demonstrated for him (in order to sound like less of a moron when he explained them to other people), so he was mildly grateful for Sean’s assistance. Not that he was ever going to tell him that.

"You’re not as shitty at this as you think you are," Sean said, hand directing Eduardo’s mouse. The other palm sat heavy between Eduardo’s shoulder blades.

"Whatever," Eduardo said, and went to check whether people wanted him to pick up pizza or chinese for lunch-dinner.

*

He next discovered that Sean was _obsessed_ with venture capitalists and collected acquaintances with them like Eduardo's cousin Luiz used to collect baseball cards.

His current girl was the daughter of one, which Eduardo considered to be a disastrous conflict of interests, but Sean was unconcerned.

"She’s cool," he said, shrugging.

This was not untrue. Miranda spoke three languages, had worked as a booth babe at 2 Comic-Cons, played in a soccer club, knew to call it football, and consequently had thighs that could probably crush a trachea without putting too much thought into it.

Miranda was, in fact, pretty _fucking_ cool.

Eduardo kind of adored her, especially since Sunday night when she let him lay his head on her lap and petted his hair while he tried to make the world stop spinning from too much Jägermeister. She scratched his scalp occasionally with her long unpolished nails and told him about her favorite Italian horror movies while Sean sat on the floor beside them, fiddling with her sandals and looking at them funny.

"I could totally steal your girlfriend," he wanted to say, except for how Sean didn't actually consider her to be his girlfriend in the first place and, more importantly, he bet she usually didn’t do that for straight guys. _Goddamnit_.

*

"It's going to be a real shame when she declares vengeance and has her father crush all of our hopes and dreams," Eduardo mused forlornly.

"I know what you mean," Dustin said with a sigh.

Sean tried to make pot smoke rings and failed miserably. "She's going to keep sending me photos of her nieces, and then of her and her new boyfriend, and then invite us to all to the good sorority parties."

And despite how hard Eduardo and Dustin had laughed in his face, that's exactly what happened.

A week and a half later Sean cc'd him on the one where her youngest niece was dressed like a dragon and an older one was trying to slay her with a foam sword.

She'd friended them all in Facebook, and now Eduardo actually knew how to let her know the pic was pretty badass.

*

It had to be acknowledged that this strange trail of benevolent exes was probably because, obnoxious egoist or not, Sean knew what he was doing, apparently, only hooking up with girls who just wanted to have a good time.

"A good time" (ā gŏŏd tīm)  
n. [Parker]  
1\. a month or two of having enormous amounts of sex  
2\. getting high enough to never remember all the long, philosophical meanderings about information distribution and open source politics.

And it undoubtedly helped that - unlike most every college guy Eduardo knew (especially in The Phoenix, which had turned out to be populated almost entirely by assholes) (if absolute power corrupts absolutely, Eduardo did not want to know any of those guys in 20 years) - Sean never talked about what he did in bed with any of his past someones.

He was like—a gentlemen or something.

If gentlemen occasionally told stories featuring the recreational use of cocaine.

 

_to: mzuckerberg@facebook.com  
from: esaverin@facebook.com  
subj: re: parker_

_this just means the inevitable collateral damage will be coming from SOMEWHERE ELSE_

 

_to: esaverin@facebook.com  
from: mzuckerberg@facebook.com  
subj: re: parker_

_sure_

_if you mean your pants_

 

_to: mzuckerberg@facebook.com  
from: esaverin@facebook.com  
subj: re: parker_

_that's not funny_

 

_to: esaverin@facebook.com  
from: mzuckerberg@facebook.com  
subj: re: parker_

_yes it was_

*

Eduardo's short visit had the unexpected consequence of making the multi-state separation both more and less ulcer-inducingly stressful.

His concerns had been re-ranked, with _best friend seduced to the dark side_ and _everyone having lots more fun than me_ downgraded to a Level Three threat and _CEO arrested for gross violation of state labor laws_ raised to Night Sweats.

"You're still worried we're all going to blow ourselves up or something," Dustin accused him, finally, after a few rounds of subtle conversational probing.

"No," Eduardo lied, and then sighed. "I guess I just expected our company headquarters to be more—company headquarters like."

"Andrew was talking about bringing in a water cooler," Dustin ventured. "Mark said he'd think about it."

"Mark's thinking about water coolers?"

"Well, I think he assumed that was a metaphor for revamping the waterfall method," Dustin admitted, "but we might get one anyway. Chris said there's space in the kitchen."

"Right," Eduardo said.

*

And maybe Eduardo was trying to distract himself, a little. Because things could have been going better in New York – in the sense that any variation from the norm would be considered to be a definite improvement.

In the sense that, basically, Eduardo was fucking up big time.

This was because Eduardo could not land a pitch to save his life.

The thing about pitches was that they didn't have to be especially factual, detailed, or even more than half-way plausible. A pitch was supposed to _sound_ good, and remind the listener of a lot of other different things that they really liked, which you'd managed to convince them were remarkably similar to your completely original (if inaccurate, vague, and less than plausible) idea.

And the reason pitches worked, if you were very good at them, is that the people you threw them to were just powerful and influential enough to have either forgotten everything they once knew about converting attractive ideas into reality, or they never had to learn in the first place.

Pitches also went great with names. Names, titles, doomsday proclamations, and punch lines were an intrinsic part of a pitch.

Pitches were really made to be constructed and delivered by people like Sean Parker, Eduardo had thought during his first five flame outs, and this thought mostly made him want to use the binders people kept giving back to him to beat Sean about the head.

Around flame out eight or ten, he was just really tired and thought that Sean would probably help him if he asked. And then he resolved to not think about Sean Parker again.

So the meetings he could actually get booked tended to end pretty early when it was revealed that Eduardo was crap at illustrative parables, no one else would be joining him, and they couldn't even conference in the CEO. Since pitches sort of _needed_ the Marks of the company to tell the listener how very clever they were for understanding the grand vision being presented to them and, to be honest, it tended to look really bad when the company head wasn't engaged enough to even say, 'hi'.

(Eduardo sort over glossed over the part where Mark was not, in truth, engaged enough to know he should have said 'hi' in the first place.)

Plus there were all the meetings he couldn't even schedule, mostly because a strategic analyst or, you know, receptionist, was not the target audience for underdeveloped spiels and thought he was a tragic and/or hilarious joke.

For instance, Reena from DDB Worldgroup, who said, "The thing I'm getting from this document," scratching the plastic with her nail, "is that you can't even get people to put the numbers together for you. That's the level of organization you're dealing with here."

"I wouldn't say—"

"You wouldn't say that was accurate?"

"I wouldn't say that."

"No, you probably wouldn't," she said dryly, "But that's because then I'd ask you to get the fuck out of my office and stop wasting my time."

"So," Eduardo said, after a moment of silence, "That was actually you telling me to leave."

"Perceptive too."

And then Patrick McCann's administrative assistant was not terribly impressed with his most flirtatious first date smile, possibly because she was 87 and that had been a very weird choice, mostly due to nerves.

"I just—wanted to have dialogue," Eduardo said quickly, before she could explain again why no one would see him, and then he'd have to go find one of those bridges Mark was always going on about lately and jump off it. "I thought maybe we could have a short dialogue, about the opportunities that the company could bring to your firm. There's a lot of—misinformation about Facebook. And what we're doing."

"We haven't heard any information."

"Which is—sort of—sort of misinformation. In a way," said Eduardo, and then at the look on her face, "This is like that thing where no one will hire you until you have some solid experience on your resume, which you can't get because no one will hire you, isn't it?"

She let her glasses slip down her nose and peered at him over the thin silver frames, just to make sure that there was absolutely no doubt about how hard she was judging him right then. Which was fine, because he was judging her right back. Eduardo had judged her to be the scariest grandma he'd ever met, whether or not she actually had grandkids. And if they'd been delicious. "I don't suppose you'll ever know, seeing as in a year or so you'll be graduating Ivy League and daddy's car cost more than my first condo."

"That obvious?" Eduardo said weakly.

Her eyebrows said volumes.

"Right, I'll—work on that."

"No, they'll love that bit," she said flatly, sliding the folder back to him across the desk, "I bet you golf too," which Eduardo took as his cue to exit.

*

"Well, what are you going to do about it?" Sean said, because (despite all of Eduardo's sincere vows) right around the time Eduardo had stopped freaking out about the guys being out there all alone Sean had taken to calling him every couple days or so, to check in.

Eduardo kept thinking maybe they should make it a scheduled meeting, with minutes or something, except that Sean would go on these epic tangents about the current price of red haired bud coming in from Frisco and why England doesn't have its own Bill Gates. So maybe it wasn't exactly a company thing, even if it wasn't exactly _not_ a company thing either.

"I don't know," Eduardo said and tilted his head side to side like Sean could see him, "trade in Mark for a kinder, gentler, more profit margin friendly model?"

"Nah, it'll be a few more months still until he's basically expendable," Sean said.

*

"… you do know I was joking?"

"Sure," Sean said. "Me too."

*

It wasn't that he was preoccupied all the time about it, but sometimes Eduardo still did wonder what everyone else was doing right then when he was stuck on the subway, and they'd had to stop for twenty minutes for some technical glitch or someone's lunch break or whatever, and everyone smelled tired and sweaty and like ten different kinds of dry cleaner chemicals.

Sometimes he couldn't sleep and he'd seen all the movies on HBO or Showtime too many times, and so he'd text Mark something like, _how r things_ or _what r u doing_ and a lot of times he wouldn't hear back until he woke up the next morning, but sometimes it would be right away and something silly like _fucking with variables_ or maybe _dustin forgot the breadstix_ , and it made Eduardo feel better, in this inexplicable way, just to know that.

It was just that Chris could get talked into things real easy, because he was laid back like that and wanted to get along with people. And Dustin and Mark weren't the best help in those times, because either it didn't affect him so Mark didn't give a shit or it was Dustin's idea. Eduardo didn't do much himself in those situations, he had to admit, but at least he could watch it go down and freak out at the appropriate intervals.

And there was that voicemail that alluded to something about a chimney and zip lines, and it wasn't that Eduardo would cry about it or anything, but it would be deeply inconvenient for Facebook if Sean happened to face the minimum six months of jail time for a student seriously injuring themselves or another equally stupid person after he'd bought them alcohol.

Fine, and some of his stories weren't half bad, and his hands were strangely comfortable, and sometimes Eduardo thought _what would Sean Parker do?_ and traded in just a little more of his dignity and self-respect to make it out of there in one piece, but it was more about how Mark had gotten all attached and found Jesus, in a way. If Jesus was a 24 year old drop out who liked to lounge around with his shirt off, always fucking with his hair in the mirror, and (for all intents and purposes) deeply agnostic to the point of apathy.

It was more that Mark would miss him. It really wouldn't affect Eduardo's life at all.

*

"Sean's worried that you might be lonely."

"He should be worried about himself," said Eduardo peevishly, pondering the bleak possibly of ever recovering their deposit, and then froze mid-slouch at the click-click-click of typing. "What was that?"

"mm, nothing," Dustin said, then shouted, "Mark, I'm using your phone."

"Just tell me you weren't—"

"Letting Sean know you're keeping yourself busy thinking only of him? Yeah, no."

"Thank g—"

"Ha, just kidding, I totally was."


	4. Chapter 4

What they didn’t seem to understand is that there were plenty of things to do in New York, being as it was _New York_ and everything.

It wasn’t like Palo Alto was some sought after Spring Break location. Not that it _was_ Spring Break, and not that New York was either, seeing as it was horribly muggy during summer and there was a distinct lack of world renowned beaches. But it had a massive tourism agency, because people everywhere spent thousands of dollars and flew many, many hours just to visit. And if a serious, significantly underreported crime rate had been an issue, way less college students would be headed to Mazatlan.

Thus, traveling around that city several times a week should have made Eduardo the envy of millions and not at all a subject of condescension.

"What your problem is, son," mused Edgar, a spry 75 year old bent on touring the local museums and improbably seating himself beside Eduardo during three separate subway journeys, "Is that I give you a glass of water and you wouldn’t say half full or half empty, you’d ask if it’s poisoned."

Eduardo sighed. "There’s this guy I know," he said, "who – if you pulled out a half glass of water, he wouldn’t know where to even start figuring that out. So he’d just ask what _you_ think, and take that 5 minutes of explanation to figure out how to get you to give it to him, free of charge."

"That’s not a very nice thing to say about someone," said Edgar disapprovingly.

"Well," Eduardo said, "He’s not a very nice person."

Edgar peered at him suspiciously. "Did you know that you’re smiling?"

"Er, botox," Eduardo said.

*

It wasn’t like other students weren’t sticking around. There were four guys from The Phoenix, and at least one of them consistently remembered his name.

And he’d gone out for drinks three times with the girl with frizzy hair who had sat next to him for most of Math 21a, until she presumably heard about his unofficial Facebook status as a breaker of hearts and the tender female spirit. (Despite Eduardo having been presented with little evidence throughout his life that the female spirit was exceedingly delicate or tender.) (He was fairly certain that this was spurious propaganda, used to lure mankind into a false sense of complacency.) (Which was just fine with Eduardo, really, he wasn’t looking to start anything.)

_to: mzuckerberg@facebook.com  
from: esaverin@facebook.com  
subj: the fabric of the internet is lined with personal humiliation_

_Sometimes I worry we may have created a monster._

_to: esaverin@facebook.com  
from: mzuckerberg@facebook.com  
subj: re: the fabric of the internet is lined with personal humiliation_

_Dr Frankenstein used much less electricity._

_to: mzuckerberg@facebook.com  
from: esaverin@facebook.com  
subj: re: the fabric of the internet is lined with personal humiliation_

_Awaking a hideous monstrosity from dead limbs, very cost efficient. Who knew?_

*

So Eduardo may not have been renting in the heart of, well, anywhere, and it may not have been party central, but there were things to do besides wallowing in petulant misery.

A copious amount of masturbation was unfortunately not one of these things, because the couple next door seemed to be going at it during all hours of the day and night.

Seriously, every time he turned around, or woke up in the morning, or made breakfast, or made dinner, or stumbled in after an ego shredding day and just wanted some peace and quiet with a side of The Sopranos: grunting, moaning, and mattress squeaking. And Eduardo just frankly found it impossible to jerk off to the sound of other people having sex (unless it was attractively fake people having attractively fake sex, like in porn).

I could at least jerk off if I had gone to California, he’d find himself thinking (though those were exactly the kind of defeatist thoughts he was trying to weed out and crush like his reputation among womenfolk), but then he’d remember the sounds from Sean and his girlfriend, who had also been next door when he was staying there. Sounds which had just—they’d been more appealing, that was all. There was this satisfied low, tight noise that came from deep in Sean’s chest that had made Eduardo go all hot and roll over onto his stomach to press his dick into the bed and his cheek into the pillow, eyes scrunched shut. Because of what she must have been doing, how she must have felt, to push that sound out of him. And because Eduardo hadn’t gotten laid for an outrageously long time. Obviously.

So he’d think that, and then the neighbors would just not shut the fuck up, and the only reasonable response was to stand in the kitchen, awkwardly hard, and make another To-Do list.

The current one was scrawled on printer paper, attached to the fridge with a magnet from Wok 'n Roll Sushi, and read:

buy milk  
POSITIVITY  
avoid nosey subway strangers  
plan state school targets  
 ~~no~~ less binge drinking  
don’t shower before PA calls  
no jerking off from ~~the fucking neighbors~~ ~~sean noises~~ weird stuff  
 ~~can still get scurvy?~~ remind mark about scurvy.  
be less gay about sean

*

All the lobbies Eduardo entered were completely different and yet looked completely the same. All glinting metal and glass, to construct an impression of translucent, wide space, as if to communicate to prospective clients that they were an open book. An open book with open walls that did not block the open flow of ideas—ideas all perfectly conforming to the current mode, of course, thumb planted firmly on the pulse of every possible demographic segment.

They were all equally fraudulent in their transparency.

And cleaning bills must have been astronomical.

These should be my people, Eduardo thought. Mass-producing thoughts instead of the mass-production of commodities. He was selling possibilities to people who produced nothing but loved statistics. It should have been a slam dunk.

"These should be my people," Eduardo explained to Cesar wistfully, who had been sitting with him in the latest lobby and also waiting aimlessly for someone to remember his existence.

He was being interviewed for an open position and, in Eduardo’s objective opinion, was wearing a much better suit.

Eduardo suggested that if Cesar had any success, perhaps Eduardo would be meeting with him next.

Cesar opined that that would probably be a poor idea unless Eduardo was looking to work in the mail room. Eduardo thought he should consider no longer shopping at Men’s Warehouse.

"They have a mail room?"

"Leaflets," Cesar volunteered.

"I could make leaflets," Eduardo decided, after a moment of thought. There was likely very little traveling involved in leaflet production, which was quite an appealing thought at the moment.

Cesar did not appear very convinced, possibly because he could tell there was not a single artistic bone in Eduardo’s body or because he was sensing the imminent psychotic break.

"I was a teacher’s aide in high school," Eduardo insisted, "I can laminate."

" _What_ company are you with again?"

"um," Eduardo said. "Hey, what direction to the bathroom?"

*

Though you might assume by their eerily similar lobbies that most advertising agencies would have a standard floor plan, Eduardo had discovered that you would be horribly, horribly wrong. (However, they _did_ all appear to have the same Core Values – Integrity, Customer Satisfaction, Respect, Diversity, and Innovation, respectively – and claimed that these values were what truly distinguished them from competitors.)

This particular floor plan seemed to consist of very long corridors, black marble floor, and cubicles that were pretending not to be cubicles, with the assistance of stained wood desks and chairs offering actual back support. Looping may have been involved.

Cesar and the security guard had expressed a vague but shared belief that the bathrooms were somewhere to their left. It was quite possible that they were thinking of another building. Or they could have done it on purpose.

Either way, Eduardo was of the opinion that they were complete bastards.

Eduardo extracted his phone with dreams of GPS and a distinct fear that he had somehow wandered into Connecticut during the last 50 minutes. (It had actually been 15 minutes, but it felt like 50, which was the point.)

It turned out that in the metallic and glass bowels of the earth there was excellent reception.

It also just so happened that this was the tenth time Eduardo had called Mark’s cell that week and it just rang and rang, because that’s all it did lately. Plus, there was all the simmering sexual frustration, the succession of blunt rejections, and the fact that his socks were still squishing in his shoes from accidentally stepping into that puddle an hour ago. So when Sean picked up instead and failed to magically transform into a 19 year old Jewish programmer, Eduardo naturally lit into him, because it had been that kind of day, and seriously, Sean was,

"—no fucking help, so I don't want to deal with you right now, okay?"

"Oh, and what do you want me to do, 3,000 miles away?"

"I don't know, walk down the hall and talk to the CEO of this fucking company?" Eduardo snapped and glared balefully at a team building poster.

"And he's going to say—"

"I _know_ what he’s going to—"

"He’s going to do that thing, the thing about how we don't _know what this is yet_ ," Sean snapped back, and passing non-cubical residents took one look at Eduardo's face and apparently decided it might be a better idea to keep hands and head directed towards their laptops and not question why a strange man would be storming up and down their hallways, if he was armed, what they could possibly do about it if he was (other than praying that the only one to get shot in the face would be that dick who was always stealing their parking spot), or how long it should take for an adult to make it to the men’s room, if he was anything close to sober.

Eduardo was drunk on righteous fury—it was completely different. And justified.

"Is it a fucking cat?" said Eduardo.

"No," Sean admitted, grudgingly.

"Is it a toaster oven?"

"Okay, I get your—"

"Is it a train station?"

" _Okay_ ," Sean said.

"Is it a website?"

"Okay, seriously, fuck you now."

"Is it a _social networking_ website?"

"Now I feel like I'm talking to Zuckerberg," Sean said sourly. "I see why you two are close now. Really, I can see why you're dying alone together. That'll be fun for you."

"Then the obvious source of revenue," Eduardo continued, ignoring him, "is selling—"

"--targeted advertising services," Sean said, defensive. "I do know that."

"You were just waiting until Mark got the stick out of his ass about it."

"Well, he gets this look on this face."

"I know what you mean," Eduardo commiserated, softening a little and pausing to lean across a bare white wall.

"I don't have a fancy title," Sean reminded him with an edge to his voice, and it occurred to Eduardo that he might have been a major jerk about this, at some point.

"Sorry," he said, "This just sucks."

"It'll be okay," Sean said easily, like it actually could be and not like Sean was just sick of listening to him, and apparently Eduardo could be a _complete asshole_ as well as someone hated by the entire New York business community and grandmothers, which was an unwelcome revelation.

His mother would be so disappointed in him, and that was usually his dad's job.

*

"What if you were made—VP? Business Development?" Eduardo suggested the next time they talked.

" _What_?"

"Could you come back me up, in place of Mark?"

"Sure, sure I could, I could do that," Sean said, stuttering a little (though Eduardo wasn't entirely sure why; it seemed like the obvious solution).

"Okay, well, I'll talk to him about the position. But you're talking to him about the trips."

"He's going to do that thing with his chin. And the eye thing."

"I believe in your manipulative capabilities," Eduardo said honestly.

"You do love my wiles," Sean said cheekily.

"I'm hanging up now," Eduardo said, except that he didn't, and Sean told him about Chris leaving his phone under the bed at a one-night-stand's place, who turned out to be living with his crazy bigot grandfather, and then Eduardo explained about diabolical infinite hallways and his momentary consideration of a zen-like life of mass mailing support duties, and at some point Eduardo fell asleep and crushed his Bluetooth earpiece because it was that kind of week.

*

Eduardo got a hold of Mark the next day and came right to the point, "I think we should have Sean head Business Development."

"I made him President days ago," Mark said, without pausing a key stroke.

"So now he _outranks_ me?"

"He does like you," Mark said, as Dustin interjected, "I may have told him you’re hiding your desperate love behind a piercing veil of bitchiness."

"Am I on speaker phone?" said Eduardo dangerously over Mark’s muffled,

"Did he notice that makes no sense?" followed by scuffling. "And what happens when Wardo’s nice to him?"

"When’s Wardo going to be _nice_ to him?" replied Dustin’s tinny voice, incredulous.

"Never mind," Eduard sighed, resigned to his idiot friends and consequent lot in life. "Mark, were you ever going to _tell_ me?"

"I just did," said Mark impatiently. "If you'd come out here—"

"I don't need to _be there_. We talk all the time!"

"But you know I'm not actually listening to you, though, right?"

"This is so great," Dustin said. "We should call Wardo _every night_."


	5. Chapter 5

"You are fucking shameless," Eduardo said when Sean pried open the car door and wiggled over the brake to shove his bag and suitcase into the backseat. But the rumpled shirt, pink lines pressed into Sean's cheek, and mouth soft from sleep kept him from expressing the full breadth of his disdain for Sean's now-predictable cowardice and his general status as the source of all chaos in Eduardo's life. (Which would actually be an equally shameless lie, anyway, since Sean was well acquainted with Dustin Moskovitz.)

" _President_ , you _dick_ ," was all he ended up muttering, and helped Sean adjust the seat back so he could doze through the traffic on the way back to Eduardo's place.

When he slid his jacket under Sean's head to keep it from sliding off and into the window pane, his breath was smooth and hot against Eduardo's wrist and smelled like mint Frappuccino.

*

They hadn't spoken again after the VP offer while Eduardo fumed for a bit and only sent Mark terse text messages, but Sean had made plans to fly out right away.

"Because I asked him to," Eduardo said, shrugging, when Dustin wanted to know what the fuck.

"You're not _actually_ blowing him, are you?" Dustin had said, suddenly serious.

"Yes," he'd replied tartly, "through the miracles of astral projection."

"I'm just saying—weird."

"I _am_ the CFO," said Eduardo crossly.

"When you keep telling people that all the time, it loses some of its cachet."

"When it seems like no one _remembers_ ," Eduardo began, since he'd yet to see any evidence of this theoretical cache, decreasing or not.

But Dustin interrupted cheerfully, "Just worried about your gravitas, man," and then asked him if he was prepared to order enough pizza to feed a small army, which was a good point. So Eduardo actually did go shopping.

He even bought those pickles Sean liked and a microbrew that both of them could stand, because he'd hadn't intended to ask for help, ever, except in such spurious cases as a zombie apocalypse or raining cats and dogs, but then he'd just been so furious and then Sean didn't even make him beg. He picked up an extra pillow too, one of the good neck support ones. And he replied to the itinerary Sean sent over, saying he didn't need to take a cab.

*

Sean was easily roused when they got back to the apartment and he settled against the counter to watch Eduardo reheat some Indian with only slightly obnoxious ease. It seemed as if it took Sean five minutes, if that, to make himself completely at home. From the perspective of someone with a painfully polite mother and a very reasonable amount of social anxiety, this was one of Sean's more unsettling qualities. Eduardo couldn't figure out why he was starting to like it.

They ate standing up, side by side, from mismatched plates and Sean expounded re: his dastardly methods for gaining CEO approval to join Eduardo in New York.

Surprisingly, the solution was not to get Mark disgustingly drunk.

"Told him that, sure, we could drop that angle, just focus on bringing in an investor or two. A good angel investor--we could move out into better offices, space for some nicer server racks. A safer bet, definitely."

"You _didn't_ ," Eduardo said, amused, and Sean laughed, acknowledging safety to be the essence of uncool in a way that made it very obvious how much Mark had grown on him as well.

"It would be a shame to give away any more pieces of the company than we have to," Eduardo said, sobering.

"I told him that too."

*

It had seemed a little silly to put Sean up in a hotel when he couldn't really pay for it on his own, so it would be money from the account, and the plane tickets hadn't been cheap on such a short notice.

Eduardo had a perfectly good couch that they could take turns on and after hearing—other things through the California house's thin walls, he was confident snoring would not be an issue.

Besides, it might very well be necessary to eat the cost of couple more tickets sooner or later, because Eduardo had warned Dustin that he knew where he lived, and would fucking _go there_ to kick his ass if he didn't stop referring to their "love nest."

*

"Your neighbors," Sean ventured the next morning.

The kitchen felt cramped with Sean there in with him as Eduardo filled the coffee maker and listened to the noises of Sean's wide mouthed yawns, the faint rasp of his boxers against his thighs, the slapping of his bare feet against the tile as he opened four drawers before finding the one with spoons.

"Yeah," Eduardo said and felt his face heat. "They do that."

*

Settling in and finding a better place for Sean to put his suitcase didn't take that long, and then Eduardo made breakfast, including hash browns (because he had this resolution now, to be a nicer person around Sean, who had in retrospect maybe only half-way deserved it; and besides which, it seemed like it only encouraged him).

Having Sean underfoot all the time was a little awkward, mostly because Eduardo wasn't sure what to do with him. There had been an army of miscellaneous issues and bustling, unwashed people as a buffer in California, and Eduardo was left considering that they wouldn't have a legitimate reason to leave the apartment more than four times a week and he couldn't remember what he talked about with other people, when they were just hanging out.

At Investor Association and Phoenix meetings there had been talk about GMAT prep, the classes you took, the classes you're taking, the classes you're planning on taking, and who's fucking who. Plus all the flagrant lies about a senator your father or your aunt has supposedly known for years when it's actually just the occasional Christmas card. In the Kirkland dorm, Eduardo didn't even know. It had been nothing in particular, just stupid gamer bragging rights, giving each other shit, stress about a test, claiming to be drunk at least an hour before they really were. It had just been comfortable, and Eduardo had never thought about what he was going to say next or felt much pressure to say anything unless he felt like it (until there was Sean Parker and the fucking Crimson, but _still_.).

But with Sean there and waiting to be—something, Eduardo was suddenly very conscious about how little they had to say to each other. Sean was just so _there_ , with his nice watch and incongruous cheap shoes and perfect white teeth smiles. And not even pissing Eduardo off, which would have given Eduardo a pretty big clue about how to behave around him.

"uh, the coffee?" he finally went with.

Sean took another sip. "It's good."

"You don't need to say that." Eduardo knew that the beans were pre-ground and getting old.

"Well, I like it," Sean said defensively and held the cup tighter like Eduardo was going to steal it back.

So they were getting off to a great start.

And then Eduardo showed him where the washer and dryer were kept, turned on CNN for a while, and then walked him through the spreadsheet that Sean persisted in calling "the thing" – which may have been much more concise than "the potential client contact matrix" but was vague to the point of _nonsensical_.

"There are at least five things you call 'the thing'," Eduardo reminded him sensibly.

"Yeah, but you always know which one I'm talking about."

"That's not really the point."

"Well, it should be," Sean responded, unconcerned, and then made them turkey sandwiches like he was perfectly comfortable doing that in someone else's apartment.

Eduardo was still waiting for it to become unappealing. Any moment now.

Eduardo's sandwich had too much mayo, but it started them talking about the best delis, the appropriate balance between meat and condiments, this terrible barbecue recipe book of his father's that his mom had been trying to misplace for years, and Sean's last girl who it turned out he wasn't seeing anymore. That had been even shorter than the last one.

"Isn't that sort of..." Eduardo hedged.

"She had to focus on her internship," Sean said, noncommittal.

*

They couldn't get twenty minutes with DDB Worldgroup again until Thursday, and during that time Sean set about making himself an agreeable nuisance who liked to make complicated breakfast burritos for lunch, because that was just the kind of bullshit he'd introduce into Eduardo's life.

He kept putting DVDs back in the wrong cases (whatever was closest) and would sprawl across Eduardo's bed with his shoes on when they had a call with Chris and Dustin, rolling over onto his back and forcing Eduardo to type slower to avoid poking him in the eye with an elbow, gel stiff curls tickling the back of Eduardo's right hand.

Sean said stupid shit like, "let's go bowling," and then dragged him out to a club instead when neither of them were dressed for it, shouting new directions to the cab driver with his arm slung across Eduardo's lap for balance.

And there was this time when Sean slid a hand around his waist, pulling him back by spreading the palm over his stomach, to shout, "hey, I had this thought," in his ear and nodding away the woman Eduardo had been dancing with – Elisha or Elina, long legs and thick black ponytail. Sean's mouth had bumped against his ear as he rambled about making a push with private high schools, other hand folding loose and sloppy over Eduardo's hip, and Eduardo felt like everyone was looking at him, because it wasn't that kind of place, while Sean seemed to not even notice.

 _too busy to bail you out next 36 hrs fair warning_ , Mark sent him during the middle of one night.

 _noted will hold off on justifiable homicide_ , Eduardo replied, but it was mostly habit by that point, because when they finally got in to see Reena, Eduardo was reminded of exactly why he'd asked Sean to come out in the first place as Sean leaned smoothly across the desk and said,

"I don't think either of us really care about this document," when she started in on the numbers. "What you're concerned with is your bottom line. And that's what we can help you with, if you'll let us."

Sean sat back, looking like a total asshole and running a careless arm over the top of Eduardo's chair (which probably made Eduardo look twitchy, great). "I'll even _tell you_ your bottom line, since I'm feeling generous. You lack consolidated and up-to-the-minute information about consumer interactions and future purchase behavior. We have it. So the real question is: how much do you think that's worth? And do we agree?"

Afterward, Eduardo ventured, a little cautiously, "We're not selling them space"

"We're selling them space," Sean said, hustling him out of the way of a delivery man.

"We're not _just_ selling them space," Eduardo insisted.

"You knew that."

"I knew that," Eduardo admitted.

Sean grinned, clearly enjoying the shoe being on the other foot. "You didn't want to _say_ that."

"We're selling them our users," Eduardo said, horrified and strangely elated. His mother wouldn't even know what to do with him.

"Yep," Sean said, bumping their shoulders.


	6. Chapter 6

Reena called them back for a follow-up and signed on the dotted line, smiling at the both of them. She had a nice prim smile, actually, and Eduardo thought he meant it when he said it would be a pleasure working with her.

Sean made Eduardo go out clubbing with him again to celebrate.

It was such a Sean thing to do: wheedling until he got his way and then plying Eduardo with terrible, watered down drinks, leaning across the table on his elbows to shout in Eduardo's face, their cheeks brushing, his stupid stubble rubbing Eduardo's skin raw and making it itch hotly, and then peeling off for twenty minutes -- drawing suddenly back and emptying his glass in one gulp before standing and leading this girl to the dance floor. He had his hands locked around her waist when the crowd swallowed them.

Eduardo was checking his phone when Sean slumped back into his chair, hair sticky with sweat. His shirt was damp in patches too, riding up a little as he leaned forward and molded tight to his chest. "Welcome back," Eduardo said and then dropped his eyes swiftly to the screen.

It was lucky that he'd made the To-Do List electronic, because he had an item to bold. And then underline.

*

“I’ve got a possible lead from this guy who used to chat me up before the bankruptcy,” Sean mentioned, off hand, one afternoon on the subway. “Kind of a dick, always on about synergy but you knew he just wanted to peel off some funding.”

“How mercenary,” Eduardo said wryly. “I shudder to think.”

“That’s enough out of you, pal.” Sean pointed a mock-threatening finger. “Theil’s legit, anyway. I ran into him once back in the day. And dickface set me up a meet. A _personal favor_.”

“So maybe you should stop calling him dickface.”

‘Just don’t be your charming self’, Eduardo almost said later, but then caught himself. Chris kept claiming that everything was going smoothly, that people fucking _loved_ Parker out there.

And they’d actually been getting along so far. Mostly.

*

Sean had only been there for two weeks and his stuff was everywhere.

His running shoes had tracked mud across the carpet and settled in the bathroom (discarded after a long run, when Sean would climb into the shower and stroll straight from it and into the kitchen for a glass of water, a towel wrapped around his hips and water still running down his long back in droplets). The dry cleaning bill had doubled and there was a copy of _Rich Dad, Poor Dad_ on the coffee table. There was relish in the refrigerator, which Eduardo considered a taint upon burgers and hotdogs, and tall brightly colored energy drinks.

"I just tripped over your sandals again," Eduardo shouted into the living room after he'd done it a third time and bumped his knee hard enough to bruise. "Just so you know."

"Thanks for the weather report," Sean threw back over his shoulder as Eduardo limped in rather piteously and deserving of compassion and expensive take-out, if he did say so himself. "Partly cloudy, chance of Saverin thunder."

He threw up his shoulder, decimating a tank on screen with a proud cackle.

"Chance of me kicking your ass," Eduardo muttered and helped himself to the rest of Sean's soda and the other half of his sandwich before realizing it contained the dreaded relish layer.

He gagged a little. "Ugh, you need to _stop_."

"You could quit being a stealer," Sean said, settling back against Eduardo's legs and adjusting his hold on the controller.

"Hmph," Eduardo said, unconvinced.

Sean's shirt was well-worn cotton soft against his skin and made his swelling knee itch. He'd probably sleep in it, and then Eduardo would undoubtedly have to pick it up off the floor the next morning, because it would be covering one of their phones, or wallets, or Sean's favorite belt.

Eduardo ran hands through his hair, settling into the couch. "We should be doing something productive."

"You know what they were doing last night? Jello shots in the pool, with no lights."

He considered mentioning that Sean had them three days ago in the East Village after dinner with one of Eduardo’s Phoenix brothers, and realized it would be a waste of perfectly good breath. He sighed. "You have a second controller?"

"That's what I'm talking about," Sean crowed, sliding forward to tip his head back over Eduardo's thighs, grinning up at him bright and wide.

So of course the other knee was bruised as hell too, as Eduardo's lungs did this hitch and he shot up to dig into Sean's bag under the table. The whole place had become a menace.

*

“I think I'm making headway with Nasser,” Sean mentioned over coffee, scrolling down his Blackberry lazily with a newspaper stained thumb.

By this point the groan was an automatic reflex. “He calls you Steven.”

“It starts with an S.”

“He thinks you work for Myspace.”

“So the relationship's a work in progress.”

“The relationship’s a figment of your imagination,” Eduardo shouted, throwing out his arms, and Sean shrugged, as if to say ‘everyone’s a critic’, scratching at that stupid nose that kept his face from being wholly beautiful, made it instead warm and imperfect. And then dropped perilously backwards to snag the phone now rumbling against the cutting board.

A phone that was _not actually his_ , Eduardo’s hand slaps communicated quite thoroughly.

“Hush now.”

“That had better not be my mother.”

“Well, we are doing just wonderfully,” Sean cooed, dodging a volley of breadcrusts . “No, everything’s fine. That’s just him making me breakfast. Yes, he is _such_ a thoughtful boy. I’ve always –watch it! not you, Anita– said so.”

“His personal assistant hates you and always sends you to voice mail,” Eduardo called after him. A well-manicured hand poked around the doorway to give him the finger.

Predictably, he’d left Eduardo with all the dishes stacked in the sink.

*

Also unsurprising (to anyone not Sean), not everyone was willing to give them a second interview without significance evidence that they had something new to bring to the table. Evidence that they were still sorely lacking.

"You said you could handle him," said Eduardo peevishly.

" _You_ said I could handle him," Sean said, which may have been unquestionably true but was certainly unhelpful.

"We _have_ \-- someone just needs to run a few queries. Mark just needs someone to run a few queries, and—"

"He doesn't want to pull someone off to do that," Sean said.

Eduardo rolled his eyes, grumbling, "He wants us to just make them up," and then hesitated and proclaimed, inspired, "We should just _make them up_."

"Right, we should just—what?" Sean said.

"Not _really_. We'll figure them out."

"Figure them out," Sean repeated, dubious.

Eduardo pulled out his phone. "We're projecting—"

"A million users by December," Sean supplied.

"A million users by Dec," Eduardo murmured, typing it in, "So that's, going by that rate—"

"What's the current rate? Did you _get_ the adoption rate?"

"Let's say—when did we open? That's, we take the million, get a per month growth—"

"Wait," Sean said, "You can't--."

"--So we say 4 million in 2005." Eduardo typed in a decisive exclamation mark and looked up proudly. "Nationwide."

"We could say that," said Sean, warming to the exercise, "It would have little to no basis in reality, _but I will totally say that_."

"And with that information base," Eduardo continued, "That's, what, what do we think is the target audience for most of these shops?"

"I don't know, 50 million."

"Right, so that means we can give them key, very key, very reliable, concrete information about 13% of their target audience. Just in 2005. So say they average 1.5 billion, we increase that by just 5% for that 13% of their audience."

"Did you just create profit projections out of thin air?"

Eduardo attacked the key pad with two fingers, doubling back once for errors. "Right there, 9.7 million."

" _9 million_ ," Sean savored.

"You're thinking about making sweet, sweet love to me right now, aren't you?" Eduardo teased. "It's okay. I understand."

"Ha, that's, ha," Sean said and then had to make an urgent phone call in the back room, so Eduardo just pulled up Powerpoint to make a chart or two.


	7. Chapter 7

They closed two more deals, overnighting documents for Mark to sign.

It was hard to tell what would come of it. The ad buys, the page views, the conversion rates-- all guesstimates, shots in the dark. It was yet to be seen how much of the necessary internet company mess these deals would cover. He knew what he _wanted_ : for them to shoulder most of the bandwidth and rent, maybe a reasonable office space at a ridiculous steal per square foot. They needed the time to prove that there was a revenue stream to grow, with the right users, the right platform, and the right kick in the ass.

Of course, he had also wanted a pony, a chem lab, a tennis coach, and not to return from vacation to find father's lawyer's glossy black thong in their living room couch, and none of those things had turned out too well.

(They still didn't talk about the chem lab.)

(In his defense, it wasn't like anyone was using the guest house.)

(Though apparently Miss Ramirez had just been house sitting.)

(He still felt bad about leaving those voicemails.)

*

They took a Forbes columnist his uncle knew out to dinner. It was the night before Sean's return flight and they kept the conversation light-- just industry predictions and start up gossip, putting in a good word for themselves without being too outrageously Dustin about it.

Eduardo ordered them all some very good wine to distract from the overcooked steak. Sean was allowed to take it up to 11 before being surreptitiously elbowed in the ribs. They passed the patter back and forth to each other and it came off well, he could tell. Someday there would be real interviews and Forbes would mention how incredibly charming and mature he had been (and not at all resembling a New Jersey mobster with his hair slicked back like that, fuck you very much Parker).

When they shook hands and Eduardo paid with his card, it felt good. For the first time it felt certain that he could do this.

After, stumbling out of a short, pipe rattling shower, he was looking forward to a movie and greasy microwave popcorn but Sean wanted to pop into a club "one last time."

As if Sean would never drag out him too late again, to wake up with fucking circles under his eyes and a feeling like there was swelling in his brain. A _nice_ thought, but a patently ridiculous one.

The cover charge was obscene but they settled at the bar next to two drunkenly witty brunettes whose names Eduardo had completely forgotten by the time they were both petting his hair and calling him baby and suggesting, "hey, let's all go dance."

"Yeah, we'll come," Sean shrugged and dragged Eduardo away from the bar by the hand, fingers hot and thumb running over his palm.

It was crowded, _really_ poorly designed (Eduardo knew an architecture major they should totally have words with), and with the drinking at dinner he'd maybe pre-gamed a little too much (maybe a lot to be honest). But the girls were sweet and nice, and they liked him so much that he really wanted to introduce one of them to Dustin so he could start plotting as they fell passionately in love.

"Your boyfriend's hilarious," the one who kept joking about med school said, hugging her arms around his neck and shouting against his ear.

"He certainly thinks so," Eduardo allowed, watching Sean shuffle over to steal a fresh beer off somebody's table, before he registered the full significance.

But then the moment to correct her was past, and there wasn't much of a point anyhow.

There wasn't a single other person Eduardo knew in this building, he realized. None of this crowd would even recognize him if he ever saw them again. In this lighting, not even if he spilled a blue hurricane over someone's $300 slacks. Not that he was intending to try, unless Sean dared him again.

So he leaned into the maybe med student, laughed back at her happy raccoon eyes and smeared lip stick, and danced like he used to when he was younger, when he would lock the door and let the radio blare.

Suddenly he couldn't remember why he had ever stopped doing that.

"To never learning better!" he toasted with their final shots.

Sean gave him a perplexed nod but agreeably drank to it anyway, adding, "And no learning worse!" with a fist punch in the air, "fuck that, with someone else's dick!"

*

Drowsy-eyed and washed out, Sean burrowed into his chest with their hug goodbye and then stepped back with fists stuffed into his thick cotton jacket to offer a harrowing description of the loneliness, despair, and anti-social behavior that might now befall a solitary Eduardo in New York (including bar crawling, sobbing in the shower, sleeping in the bathtub, long walks on an empty beach, and a Morrissey playlist on repeat). In which case, "you know, you're always welcome to fly on down."

"mmm, visceral," Eduardo said. "Yes, in that impressively specific situation, I will do so."

There was an unidentifiable look on Sean’s face. "You know what I mean."

Eduardo coughed and pointed out the time, steering him towards the entrance with both hands on his back.

*

But his place felt still and deafening that week, all of the typical clanking sounds of apartment life now amplified -- like it was off and unbalanced too, in a more hopelessly melodramatic fashion.

There were follow up emails and calls to make, financial projections to type, a lunch date to keep, a return call to his father. These were alone-things to do, that he didn't actually need any help for, but the fact remained that Sean leaning over his shoulder to piss him off with pointless opinions (and resting a hand on the back of his neck to make his thoughts short out and have to double back) would make everything seem to go much faster. In a, ok, completely nonsensical but strangely effective fashion.

Of course he missed _Mark_ , in that sick, restless way you're supposed to communicate through back slaps. He missed late night conversations about creating video games of classic literature, buzzed on sleep deprivation and crap beer. He missed tossing bottlecaps at Mark's back to test his concentration level. He missed that stupid giggling phase when Mark got too high. He missed distracting him in lectures. He missed borrowing a couple of Mark's sweatshirts and sacking out on the dorm room floor.

But, somehow, he also now missed dozens of Sean things too. He woke up and wanted to talk to Sean first thing in the morning, wanted to see him while he put on his shoes. He wanted to ignore Sean beside him on his morning run, bumping into Eduardo's shoulder and panting the chorus of classic rock tunes with a sweat-damp shirt tucked into the slipping waistband of his shorts. Eduardo wanted to bunch up with him on the subway, pressing the backs of their hands together and smelling his own soap on Sean's skin and the stale pot smoke in his jacket, stopping to eat at whatever pretentious café Sean had been reading about in the Food & Wine magazine. He even wanted to tag-team canvas the place for twenty minutes, exchanging insults and cushion bombs, in search of the glasses Sean only wore 25% of the time he needed them.

And clearly Eduardo had been wrong about the kind of movie his life had turned into. He could only fiercely, wholeheartedly hope it wasn't one of those French ones where the time seems to be stuck at dusk, the streets were always wet, and he'd churn out countless monologues about feeling like an empty suitcase.

Eduardo did not want to be a suitcase in the slightest bit.

*

_From: chughes@facebook.com  
To: esaverin@facebook.com  
Subject: possible parker emergency_

_Please tell me Sean was tearing it up during the visit of doom cuz he hasn't brought a girl over here once or wanted to go out and it's been daaaaaays._

_I think he might be more broken up about Sarah than we thought._

_Dustin thinks he might have terrifying disease of the dick and is too embarrassed to tell anyone._

_-_

_From: esaverin@facebook.com  
To: chughes@facebook.com  
Subject: Re: possible parker emergency_

_Maybe he's just getting serious._

_-_

_From: chughes@facebook.com  
To: esaverin@facebook.com  
Subject: Re: possible parker emergency_

_RIGHT._

_Look he straight up turned down this college girl's number last night during starbucks run._

_-_

_From: esaverin@facebook.com  
To: sparker@facebook.com  
Subject: checking in_

_hey, you ok?_

_-_

_From: sparker@facebook.com  
To: esaverin@facebook.com  
Subject: Re: checking in_

_fine. is something up?_


	8. Chapter 8

If Eduardo did, perhaps, end up coincidentally taking one rather long walk on one relatively under populated beach, that was between himself, the sea gulls, and the toe he stubbed on some half-buried driftwood. 

Besides, he was just in the area because a Google AVP from Fire Island had invited him for dinner and he was putting off the long ride back. 

He watched waves rush in, hands tucked into the tight pockets of his favorite black slacks, and thought about all the really great plans he had made in his life and executed flawlessly. And then how none of them had turned out anything like expected that year.

*

Something was certainly happening in California, because no one in that house could be reached for two days (not even when Eduardo had the delivery guy leave a long message on their answering machine as the irate property management company). 

And then everyone was trying to contact him all at once.

Peter Thiel had made an investment offer, and that meant they'd have to "reincorporate, dilute shares, give him some. We need the funding, I know we could use the funding, and better-- you said that time that there were more fuck ups because we staff so heavily with interns, but didn't we want to--at this price, what are we buying, I mean our valuation is crap right now, but holy shit."

" _Wardo_ ," Mark said. He was chewing Red Vines with the corner of his mouth. It sounded wet and nasty through the phone and completely like home in every way. " _Breathe_."

So he tried that for a while, which did stop the hyperventilating and helped the pounding blood vessels in his forehead.

And with the very handy power of complete sentences they were able to get to down to discussing which metaphorical bridge they were going to (hopefully, still only metaphorically) doom everyone into jumping off together. 

Metaphorical bridges had, somewhere along the way, developed into a deep Mark concern that summer. Eduardo could somewhat understand, considering his own sordid beach experience, but he was still plotting some good old fashioned throat punching for whenever he discovered just who'd planted that one. 

No one was allowed to fuck with his best friend's piece of mind but Eduardo. There was this pact they made once in the Kirkland stairway, while stumbling home from a terrible bus ride and BU kegger.

*

"He seems like a nice guy." Eduardo had decided on calling Sean back last, because Sean was _usually_ pretty intense about these types of things and it might be a good idea to have only one crazy person in the conversation at any given time. 

Instead, Sean had apparently decided to be a zombie.

"He _is_ a nice guy," Sean mumbled.

"Which is important."

Sean hummed in vague agreement.

"And he has a solid record."

Sean's throat made more indistinct noises.

"I still don’t want to give him a slice of our company yet, when we don't have any negotiation leverage."

"No," Sean said, distantly, like his mind was on something else (or, you know, _brains_ ). "I didn’t think that you would."

"If we don’t have to. Do we have to?"

He was preoccupied with quietly freaking out about the possibility of saying thanks but no thanks for your generous financial offer of _tons and tons of money_ when Sean said, in a strained tone of voice, "I've been thinking about it."

"About what?"

"About—us."

Eduardo sprinted over freaking and directly into dire panic. "Sean, I'm not gay."

"Are you fucking serious?" Sean said darkly.

"I have never not been serious!" Eduardo said, "I have been serious about this the entire time!" and hung up, shoving his phone into the silverware drawer.

"Just, fuck _everybody_ ," he told the refrigerator. 

It rattled a little, but then it did that whenever the neighbors turned their microwave on.

*

Eduardo had known exactly how it would go. He would drink too much mid-priced wine and head up the Investment Club, and then get punched by a final club and drink better wine but terrible hors d'oeuvres that he'd pretend to love. Mark would get punched the next year and drag him to all of the parties until it became commonplace and boring. Then they'd graduate and Mark would start up this smart little company with Dustin while Chris joined some non-profit and Eduardo finished his Harvard MBA. He'd marry his girlfriend as soon as she finished _her_ MBA, or possibly Law School. She would probably have a cousin or roommate that he could introduce to Mark, who'd be strategically prepped beforehand. It would have been _perfect_.

"I said you were a little gay." Mark was balancing Cup O' Noodles on his knees again while playing a first person shooter. Eduardo could hear the slurping in between the plastic clicks and faint explosions. 

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I believe that's called bisexual."

"No," Mark said seriously, "I think you're _a lot_ bisexual."

"I think you're not helping."

"No," Mark mused absentmindedly. "I imagine you knew that already."

"This cannot be happening to me."

"Well, I don't see why not."

"For fuck's sake, Mark. How about, because some of us are victims of this very inconvenient condition called human emotion. And don't think I've forgotten who got me into this mess in the first place." 

There had been very minimal groveling. Eduardo had even still been required to write half of his art history midterm – on which Mark had received an 86, it might be fair to point out. 

(And if by "required" he actually meant, "had been forced to watch Mark consume a liter of Code Red Mountain Dew and try to type with the shakes," that was completely irrelevant.)

"Wardo, we just turned down half a million dollars." They both felt this deserved a moment of silence, which Mark cut into with, "And now I'm asking you to throw away everything and come down here, even though I know we don't need you to, because I just want you here. Because it would be better."

Eduardo didn't quite know what to say to that. Especially the rustling that had sounded like picking up cue cards.

"So," Mark barked out sharply, "I don't understand why you can't do something equally stupid like be in love with Sean Parker."

Eduardo had even _less_ of a coherent reply for that one.

*

The only possible explanation for what Eduardo did next was that he was in a very dark place at the time. 

A place in which he was much too distracted to remember that he'd quit going to that particular liquor store because twice now he'd run into a certain overly boisterous Phoenix brother. 

Also, it could be tough to detach thick, football throwing bicep from around your neck when you still hadn't quite given up on _all_ of your dignity just yet.

Then Tom stopped over to drown his sorrows with Eduardo and homemade ravioli, bemoaning the disintegration of the longest running relationship he'd managed in his life.

"I promised her grandma we'd visit again." Tom cut another hunk of noodle and cheese off with his fork, his slices heavy with despondency.

Eduardo thought he might drink directly out of the bottle. "She'll understand."

"We were planning a vacation. To, like, the Bahamas or something. Dad said I could take the jet."

"Sometimes it's just not meant to be," Eduardo said, leaning over to lay some consoling pats between massive shoulder blades.

"I know man, but who does that? Walking away from everything we'd built? After 2 months?"

"Yeah, that's—that's a real human tragedy. I'm sure she feels appropriately shamed."

"She's gotta know that hook up meant nothing to me. I mean, it was a _wedding_."

"ohthankgod," Eduardo said when thuds sounded against the front door. "I mean, be right back."

He assumed it was Tim Nguyen because someone had keyed his car again, or possibly 34C about barbecuing on the balcony. But naturally, because this was Eduardo's life, instead it was Sean standing there with a backpack slung over one arm while Tom patiently detailed his list of all possible situations in which it was socially acceptable to cheat on your significant other, unless you're not a guy or she's pregnant.

"I'm not even supposed to be in this _state_ ," Sean said furiously, shutting the door behind him and flinging the backpack towards the living room. 

It was still skidding across the carpet when he crowded Eduardo up against the wall and kissed him, a light brush of chapped lips -- rough like Sean's thickly-gelled hair and his too-new jeans, everything about him looking tired and restless and trying too hard. 

A second brush made Eduardo's eyes fall shut, his hands mindlessly grasping out for belt loops to tug forward, and there was the rich, faintly spiced smell of that aftershave Sean's always worn when trying to impress somebody. The one Eduardo had always lied about and sworn he despised with every fiber of his being, when of course he fucking loved it, when it was mixed with Sean's heated skin like this, when Sean was so close and Eduardo could feel how alive he was. 

Then Sean coaxed his mouth open, right hand coming up to cover the side of his neck, thumb running over his loud, juddering pulse, and he'd always thought--not that he'd often let himself admit that he thought about this, not for more than a few seconds at a time, but he'd always thought--he'd thought it would be quicker and drunkenly clumsy. And involving a lot more zippers.

He had definitely not pictured Sean linking their hands together as they parted for air and then stating, emphatically, "If you say you're not gay again, I will _punch_ you." 

As Sean's lips were only a few inches away, the tip of his tongue slipping out to wet them as Eduardo watched, any type of talking at all had been the very last thing on his mind, to be perfectly honest. 

Tom, who clearly had no such mental restrictions, apparently found it very necessary to say, "Is this like a non-gay bashing? What the fuck?" 

So of course Sean stepped back and blinked. "Do you even know who I am?"

"oh god," Eduardo groaned, letting his body thump back into the wallpaper. He made a mental note of this moment, to remind a certain Zuckerberg that, actually, there had been _several_ valid, honest to god objections to linking his well-being to this lunatic.

Tom stepped forward for a closer look. "What, are you Ryan Phillippe? _Gosford Park_ sucked."

Valiantly ignoring this slight, Sean put on his most charming grin and held out a hand. "I'm Sean Parker."

Tom stilled. "Sean Parker."

"Of Napster," Sean confirmed brightly, upon which Tom elbowed Eduardo out of the way to grab a hold of the hand and began pumping it vigorously.

"That's _amazing_ , you know I tossed all my Metallica CDs when those fuckers started screwing with you."

"oh _god_ ," Eduardo said.

*

It took forty-five minutes for Tom to leave, during which Sean told three stories that always made him look like a complete jackass, one story that was actually new and not half-bad, and persisted in carding his fingers through Eduardo’s hair as he talked, scratching lightly and running his fingers along the back of his ear and his collarbone, and slid arms around Eduardo’s waist to deliver a light squeeze and accompanying kiss underneath his jaw before helping gather the plates and sauce pan with the smuggest smile on his face that Eduardo had ever seen in his entire goddamn life. 

Basically, Eduardo spent at least twenty minutes of that time achingly hard and with only the strongest of wills and deeply ingrained social mores to keep him from just rubbing off against the sofa arm or kitchen cabinets. 

Unsurprisingly, Sean felt considerably less constrained by the circumstances and pressed up against his back as he retrieved a beer from the fridge, palms sliding over his hips to push up under his button-down shirt and stroke bare shivering stomach, the line of Sean’s cock rigid and warm against his ass as it rubbed insistently forward in a way that made his body want to open for it, blood rushing to the surface of his skin and his face hot like near burning, that _bastard_.

"oh fuck _you_ ," Eduardo hissed, shuddering and shoving him away with both hands, "This must be Stockholm Syndrome." An action that only caused to Sean snicker as he stumbled against the table, reaching down shamelessly to adjust himself in his pants (which just made Eduardo’s skin prickle again, like fingers were running up the back of his neck).

"Tom, my newest and dearest friend, we need to you let yourself out so we can have sex now," Sean called out towards the living room.

Eduardo was looking for the pasta strainer to beat repeatedly against Sean’s head when they heard back a cheerful, "No problem, dude!" and the grinding sounds of a door opening and settling shut again.

"I take it all back," Eduardo swore fervently, and threw a potholder when Sean grinned which tumbled over Sean’s shoulder and into the sink. "But we are still not fucking on this floor that was last cleaned I don’t _know_ when."

*

Instead they undressed in the bedroom, Eduardo balancing on one leg to strip his pants off, tottering a little, and Sean plopping onto his back to squirm out of his jeans and toss his undershirt over Eduardo’s hibernating laptop. It should have much more alarming (potentially verging on terrifying), except Sean was sitting up and bouncing back against his heels as Eduardo undid his own shirt. And then Eduardo had to climb up beside him because, "god, can’t you just, no, I cannot take you seriously in socks," scooting around Sean’s side to pull off them off, lifting each foot to yank at the cloth bunched up at the toes and almost tipping Sean off the bed ( _"hey!"_ ) until Sean grabbed a hold of his shoulders.

And then, well, they were both naked, which was a little intimidating, but Sean wound his arms over Eduardo’s shoulders and then they were kissing, soft and deep, and when Sean’s hand crept up his leg Eduardo pressed forward too hard and tipped them, Sean falling back into the pillows and Eduardo on top of him, laughing into the curve of Sean’s neck as Sean laughed back at him, lifting his head up to kiss again. 

It was good, their heated skin sliding together and Sean’s cock brushing up against his, Sean’s wonderful mouth bending to bite playfully at his jugular and then at this chest. Sean hissed as Eduardo awkwardly climbed over his bent legs and up into his lap, but it was the good kind of hiss, he could tell, and it made Eduardo less embarrassed to hear the noises that came from his own throat when Sean let go of his hip to stroke his cock a little, letting him buck into it, and said, "I think we need to get these wet," bringing two fingers up to run along Eduardo’s lower lip. 

Sean licked his own palm before pressing their cocks together, sliding against each other as he pumped his hand over them and watched Eduardo suck on his fingers. He was tentative and messy but Eduardo supposed that was the idea, and Sean really didn’t seem to mind, shuffling them even closer as he pulled his fingers back and slid one down the crack of Eduardo’s ass and inhaling sharply along with Eduardo as the tip of the finger breached him.

Eduardo told himself that he was absolutely not allowed to blush when Sean said, "I like how you feel," working slowly deeper inside until he was past the knuckle, pressing their mouths lightly together again in the pauses between Eduardo’s stupid, desperate panting. There were absolutely too many places that Sean was touching at once and he didn’t actually want him to stop touching any of them, and yet was also certain he couldn't possibly handle feeling this _much_ all at one time.

"Okay, we’re going to need some actual lube if you want another one," Sean admitted and his lean to retrieve it from the bed table pressed the finger so _deep_ that Eduardo’s hips jerked and he gasped, which made Sean hurry to coax Eduardo open enough to take both of them before he would touch either of their cocks again.

"I am so hard for it, I’m afraid my dick’s broke," Eduardo confessed, laughing and pausing for another gasp, then another, because no one had ever said it felt like _that_ , just those long, blunt fingers moving inside him and the silky head of Sean’s cock rubbing against his as he could feel it rising, the edge of orgasm, and had to bat away Sean’s hand and jerk them harder, jerking Sean through it first and leaning back into the press of Sean’s fingers as they twitched.

*

"I just like everything to go how it’s supposed to. And it's just—I like to be liked." They were laying back against the headrest and Eduardo found it easier to say while straightening out all the places where they’d bunched up the sheets in untidy peaks. 

He shrugged. "It's a thing." 

"So this—" Sean started to say, trailing off into a wet, open mouthed kiss—given purposely, insultingly gentle enough that Sean would do something exactly like wrestle him onto his back, nipping at the inside of Eduardo’s thigh with his teeth and sucking a bruise under his hipbone, before Eduardo rolled them over and held Sean against the mattress with hands flat against his chest and knees slotted against his sides. 

He was hard again, peering down at Sean’s sneaky, flushed face, but there was no urgency to do anything about it yet. It simply was nice to feel like that, to be handled and looked at like that, everything heightened and lit up from the slightest shift of skin on skin. 

"That was more a generalized reference to people," he explained, letting himself fall onto Sean’s chest and earning an " _oomf_ ". "People in general." 

"And I never really wanted you to like me before," Eduardo pointed out, arching into the feel of a smooth palm gliding down the center of his back. "So there's that."

"I always liked you," Sean said, indignant.

"Not that first time."

"Well," Sean allowed, stopping to brush his mouth along the curve of Eduardo’s arm, licking out to taste it as he delivered another stroke that ended with his thumb running ( _maddeningly_ ) side to side over the back of Eduardo’s upper thighs. And then, "You reminded me of a little terrier, Jack Russell maybe. A very cranky one, little yappy ankle biter."

"So what you're telling me is: you're kind of into bestiality."

"I like little dogs," Sean continued blithely, running a thumb behind Eduardo's ear that made his whole body give an involuntary tremble. "Dogs should be cute."

"I'm not _cute_ ," Eduardo vowed firmly, shaking off a shiver.

"Yes, you are," Sean said, delivering a smack across his ass that earned him one back, thrust sideways and face smooshed into the comforter. 

"And I liked how you're crazy about me."

"But I wasn't, actually," said Eduardo reasonably.

"You are now."

"I am perfectly sane about you."

"Says the man who forced me to fly cross country by crying fraudulent heterosexuality."

"My feelings for you may be slightly unhinged," he admitted, a little breathlessly, as Sean knelt between his legs ( _"wanna suck you off, I’ve been thinking about it,"_ ) and displayed unexpected depths of patience and concentration.

*

" _fine_ , I love you, holy fuck," he finally gasped another round later. "I think my dick will actually _fall off_ if you try to give it another orgasm."

*

Eduardo's dick did not end up being damaged in the least. But he was definitely boneless and drowsy for a while, so his exhaustive expedition to find and retrieve a cell phone from strewn clothing should be acknowledged as a profound sacrifice of precious energy. 

Consequently, he called from Sean’s because it was way closer.

Mark picked up on the fifth ring and he got right down to it. He told Mark that he was right -- which Mark really loved hearing, so that was probably the best thing to lead with, plus the added benefit of being true. 

Eduardo told him that he was right about Sean. He was also right about Eduardo occasionally being a stubborn coward with an inferiority complex, though that was still not a very smart thing to say about someone who knows how often you change your underwear. He told Mark that he should have come out, that he’ll be there for the rest of the summer. That he should have been flying out here, not there, whatever the money. He shouldn’t have been in such a hurry, he just wanted so bad to make it happen for Mark, to make it happen the right way. But this was their thing and they should have been doing it together.

Eduardo took a deep breath then, because he was feeling a little dizzy. "I’m not going to make you go back to school."

"I don’t think that was up to you," Mark said dubiously.

"But you’re going to come back here," Eduardo continued, "and I’m going to rent out an office in Boston with the rest of the money in my savings and the revenue that’s going to start coming in. Because the site you built is fucking amazing and you don’t need the pricks in Silicon Valley to tell you that. Palo Alto can see this with everyone else. The people, the VCs, they’ll follow you. You don't have to go to them. And—and." He swallowed. "I don’t want to do my senior year without you, that sounds so fucking depressing."

Sean was pantomiming a gunshot to the head, but it was unclear if he was indicating self-harm or homicide, and not terribly effective due to the nakedness.

"Ok," Mark said, after a pause, "we’ll do that," and Eduardo let out the air he’d been bottling in his lungs and let himself smile stupidly into the receiver until he heard,

" _Wardo_ , what’s gotten into you?" in Chris’ deeper tone and Dustin immediately shrieked, "No, don’t tell us!"

"Mark," Eduardo began murderously, "do you have me on speakerphone?"

Sean smartly occupied his mouth before the line went dead.

 

//  
fin


End file.
